Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Kids hack school issued laptops, School District call Police

TM875 · 08-11-2005, 07:24 AM

Hacking school computers is not something new. As a few previous posters have stated, this is what we did in high school to entertain ourselves. Almost all high schools' blocking programs are jokes. There so unsecure, that the schools might just as well forget even trying to put them on their intranets in the first place.

Is this a felony? Yeah, maybe. But they're still kids just trying to do what kids do. They might have warented a suspension - not criminal charges - but if Ktown really wanted to create a program that was inpenertrable, they should hire these kids to spruce up their blocking software. Hacking is an art, and punishing the genius behind it is just stifling possible good future results.

The school should strive to teach these kids to use this power for good, rather than evil. Hacking, hardware recovery, and general computer techinical skills are valuable today. If a student is intelligent enough to break something that took designers thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to create, they should have that intelligence harnessed and cultivated (and again - be taught to use it for good). If not, then these students may very well end up being real felonious cracking in the future.

On a side note - I'm familiar with Ktown and have several friends today that went there. It's a typical suburban school and, as with any place without much to do, kids often get involved in nefarious activities.
Computers are almost mandatory in high school now. The year after I graduated, my school introduced wireless laptops in several of the classrooms. We even had a $200 thouand "Classroom of the future" built that included touch-screens, laptops, and a infrared white board. All in all, technology is a much needed stipulation in schools today. Even 1st grade classes have computers in them now.

08-11-2005, 07:24 AM	#23 (permalink)
TM875 Addict Location: Amish-land, PA	Hacking school computers is not something new. As a few previous posters have stated, this is what we did in high school to entertain ourselves. Almost all high schools' blocking programs are jokes. There so unsecure, that the schools might just as well forget even trying to put them on their intranets in the first place. Is this a felony? Yeah, maybe. But they're still kids just trying to do what kids do. They might have warented a suspension - not criminal charges - but if Ktown really wanted to create a program that was inpenertrable, they should hire these kids to spruce up their blocking software. Hacking is an art, and punishing the genius behind it is just stifling possible good future results. The school should strive to teach these kids to use this power for good, rather than evil. Hacking, hardware recovery, and general computer techinical skills are valuable today. If a student is intelligent enough to break something that took designers thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to create, they should have that intelligence harnessed and cultivated (and again - be taught to use it for good). If not, then these students may very well end up being real felonious cracking in the future. On a side note - I'm familiar with Ktown and have several friends today that went there. It's a typical suburban school and, as with any place without much to do, kids often get involved in nefarious activities. Computers are almost mandatory in high school now. The year after I graduated, my school introduced wireless laptops in several of the classrooms. We even had a $200 thouand "Classroom of the future" built that included touch-screens, laptops, and a infrared white board. All in all, technology is a much needed stipulation in schools today. Even 1st grade classes have computers in them now. __________________ "I've made only one mistake in my life. But I made it over and over and over. That was saying 'yes' when I meant 'no'. Forgive me."